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Mitch McConnell's scorched-earth strategy

'We intend to be very aggressive from Day One,' McConnell says. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

Democrats still maintain a voter registration advantage in Kentucky. The state Legislature remains split between the two parties, and Democrats dominate virtually every statewide office, including the governor’s mansion. But the state remains a heavy lift for federal Democratic candidates, and Obama is wildly unpopular here — having lost 116 out of 120 counties to Mitt Romney last fall.

As he navigates the landscape back home, McConnell — as the leader of his party in the Senate — will have to make a series of politically wrenching decisions certain to influence how Republicans remake themselves after last fall’s elections.

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The GOP leader is holding his fire on immigration, saying that he wants to see the plan the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators develop before taking a position on a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants, leaving the door open to that approach — despite voting to block a similar comprehensive plan in 2007.

If the gang reaches a deal on immigration, McConnell said it stands a “chance” of passing the Senate.

On the deficit, McConnell told Frankfort voters from a local Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club about his demands for a major deal to “save the country:” cutting Medicare benefits for wealthy taxpayers; altering how inflation is calculated to reduce cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security recipients; and raise the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security.

While he was resolute against higher taxes, he also suggested in the interview that there’s room for negotiation if Obama were to agree to these entitlement reforms.

“I’m not going to say in advance where we might end up,” McConnell said when pressed whether he might accept higher taxes with those entitlement cuts. “I know where the problem is: It’s not revenue.”

McConnell says he’s “not threatened” with the possibility that some GOP senators may freelance and cut a deal with the White House without the leader’s consent.

The problem for McConnell is that any grand-bargain talks to cut the deficit would put him in a tight spot similar to 2008, when he helped broker the wildly unpopular bank bailout to help stabilize deteriorating financial markets just weeks before Election Day. He defeated Democrat Bruce Lunsford in a tight race, 53 percent to 47 percent.

“People in Kentucky are not big fans of the bank bailouts,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, a freshman tea party favorite from Northern Kentucky, pointing to the issue as a vulnerability for McConnell. “They still remember.”

Massie is one of the conservatives being suggested as a possible primary challenger, along with businessman Matthew Bevin and the defeated 2011 GOP candidate for state auditor, John Kemper, but no one has yet decided to take the plunge.

Despite getting encouragement from tea party activists, Massie says he won’t mount a primary campaign. He said such a move would be “foolish,” and he believes a conservative challenger would receive only about 20-25 percent of the vote.

Still, McConnell’s support is soft among some on the right.

Asked if he backed McConnell, Massie paused for several seconds and then said: “Do you put ‘long pause’ in the article?”